The document outlines WaterAid's approach to promoting equity and inclusion (E&I) in water, sanitation, and hygiene (WaSH) services. It presents WaterAid's vision of universal access to safe water and sanitation, with a focus on marginalized groups. The framework provides guidance on E&I standards and indicators, and defines key terms. It aims to establish a common understanding of E&I and set minimum standards to guide WaterAid's work empowering excluded people and promoting inclusive WaSH policies, programs, and sector governance.

1. A WATERAID REPORT

2. WA believes: Access to safe water, improved hygiene and
sanitation (WaSH) is a human right.
We believe: Poverty, marginalisation, and social exclusion are
inextricably linked.
Our vision: Of a world where everyone has access to safe water
and sanitation. This certainly includes the poorest and most
marginalised who will remain unserved even when the
MDGs are met.
This means: WA must address exclusion from WaSH as it
relates to wider inequalities in power relations and in control
over water and other resources within the family, community
and at institutional levels.

3. Possible excluded groups could be:
a) Women, children
b) People with disabilities
c) People belonging to specific castes, religions, ethnic
groups, indigenous groups, and people living in remote or
peripheral areas.
d) People who are gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender
e) Displaced people, travellers, pastoralists, illegal settlers or
f) People working in particular occupations, such as manual
scavengers or sex workers or tea garden laborers.

4. Accordingly, WA aims to highlight at every opportunity the
continuing inequalities within WaSH service provision and to
contribute to the significant reduction of these inequalities.
The E&I Framework

5. The purpose of the framework is to help implement WA’s
policy
on E&I.
It aims:
 Provide a common understanding of equity and inclusion in
relation to WaSH
 Explain WA’s approach to equity and inclusion
 Establish a common set of minimum standards and
indicators as a basis for further work in specific countries or
parts of the organisation.

6. The framework has three sections:
1. WaterAid’s position and approach
 Equity and inclusion in a right-based approach
 WA’s approach to E&I in a rights-based approach
 Implications for WaterAid – challenges in putting the
framework into practice
2. Standards and indicators for equity and inclusion
 E&I standards and indicators for WaterAid
3. Explanation of terms and examples
 Explanation of terms: exclusion, marginalisation,
vulnerability and the social model of inclusion.
 Examples of marginalised groups in relation to WaSH

7. 1. We will promote and secure poor people’s rights and access to
safe water, improved hygiene and sanitation
• Work with partners to empower excluded and marginalised
people to demand their rights to safe water and sanitation.
• Make sure WaSH programmes ensure access to safe water and
sanitation for socially excluded and marginalised people.
• Ensure that WaSH programmes raise awareness of equity and
inclusion issues with duty bearers, partners and communities.

8. 2. We will support governments and service providers in
developing their capacity to deliver safe water, improved
hygiene and sanitation.
• Promote a pro-poor focus and awareness of equity and
inclusion in the policies and practice of government and service
providers.
• Promote good governance and responsiveness to recognise the
rights and meet the needs of marginalised people and groups.
• Develop the skills and capacity of all involved in the sector in
addressing E&I

9. 3. We will advocate for the essential role of safe water, improved
hygiene and sanitation in human development.
• Emphasis to other sectors the linkage between poor WaSH and
poverty, marginalisation and social exclusion; how they
reinforce each other and the importance of breaking the cycle
in order to enable human and economic development.
• Influence development actors to give appropriate priority to
WaSH issues with a focus on marginalised groups using
evidence and practice in WaSH.

10. 4. We will further develop as an effective global organisation recognised
as a leader in our field and for living our values.
Promote a positive and inclusive working environment that recognises
and
values difference and diversity as esssential for delivering our mission.
Develop leadership and people management to promote diversity as a
guiding
principle and promote and enforce inclusive practice.
Build the capacity of organisation and staff in the skills, behaviours and
attitudes needed to respond to the most marginalised people.
Continue to develop our understanding, gather evidence and share

11. Values:
Inclusive as an organisation and in our work.
Inspiring others to recognise and address exclusion.
We will collaborate with others in order to strengthen our capacity and
focus on issues of E&I.
We will be accountable for ensuring our work in equitable and inclusive.
Always learning from internal and external experience of work with
marginalised groups about the issues and how to better address them.
Courageous to challenge discrimination where it deprives poor people of their
rights to water and sanitation.

12. Challenges in putting the framework into practice
Standards and indicators for equity and inclusion
Explanation of terms and examples
http://www.wateraid.org/documents/plugin_documents/equity_and_inclusion_en
glish.pdf